It's unique and beautiful. Though this is heavy music, it transcends any categorization of "metal" or "hardcore." There is melody soaking through this album, and it's not trite and repeated like standard pop melody; rather, it is unique and fascinating. This record achieves the ideal of being beautiful and heavy at the same time, and this isn't just hyperbole. The songs and album are never boring or repetetive despite their lengths; they rise from quiet and atmospheric introductions and build to torrential pounding rhythms, and subside again as they came. The guest vocals of Maria and Ayl (from another great Boston band, 27) are a stellar inclusion, and really round out some already amazing songs. The album is an odyssey; I can't stop listening to it.

Isis is one of the few heavy metal bands recording without regard for convention, and since Tool's debut, few have succeeded in such breathtaking fashion. Turner-- who's invariably screamed at the top of his lungs to this point-- actually sings on the record's closer, "Hym". Always with an ear for the industrial drone dramatized by Swans and Skinny Puppy in the 80s, and kept alive by Neurosis (who Turner has known since starting Hydra Head), Isis have graduated from their status as the best dirge orchestra around, consolidating a number of disparate sounds to create a dynamic far more evocative than mere loud-soft-loud repetition: these are caterwauls offset by meditation.

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